With the success of the Star Trek films and Star Trek: The Next Generation, a licensing office associated with the productions took stricter control of the franchise's image. Designers of Star Trek publications were discouraged from creating depictions that varied from the style and details of the franchise, as seen in filmed productions. Previous comics of the 1960s, '70s and early '80s tend to vary from canon more than later series. Since the comics are produced by artists and writers not affiliated with franchise production staff, filmed productions disregard events and situations in them as completely apocryphal.

The Star Trek universe has been displayed in comic book form in many ways throughout its existence. A smaller company called Gold Key Comics first published Star Trek stories, starting in 1967 with a story entitled "K-G, Planet of Death." This company produced 61 Star Trek comic books from 1967 to 1979, which focused on all-original adventures of The Original Series crew of the starshipUSS Enterprise.

Since then, many other companies have published different series of Star Trek comic books, including Marvel and DC at multiple intervals. Many are simply adaptations of episodes and movies, while others are brand-new stories involving existing Trek characters, and still others have introduced completely new characters and settings. One of the best examples of the latter is Marvel Comics' series Star Trek: Early Voyages, which featured adventures of Captain Pike's crew on the original Enterprise before Captain Kirk took command.

Canonicity of Star Trek comics

While many comic book runs of the Star Trek universe have provided interesting story arcs and situations that would be difficult to show on television, all stories are considered to be non-canon.

In 2012, in an interview with Trekmovie.com, producer and writer Roberto Orci, pressed by the editor Anthony Pascale to declare that all of the recent Star Trek comics which he had overseen (such as Star Trek: Countdown) were canon until contradicted by onscreen sources, indicated that he agreed with that proposal. [1], although he would later step back from that view, saying "[I] have said a million times that we cant determine what is canon. [On] this day, [I] said something else. 'consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'" [2]

Concurrent with the Gold Key strips, a series of weekly comic strips based on Star Trek was released in the United Kingdom. Published in the pages of Joe 90: Top Secret, TV21 and Valiant, these strips appeared as two- and three-page spreads in magazines printing Star Trek and other adventure-based titles. 256 issues were published over the course of five years, with additional stories running in one Joe 90 annual, three TV21 annuals, a Valiant Super Special, two TV Comic annuals and an issue of Radio Times magazine.

From 1975 through 1979, Peter Pan Records (and Power Records, a division thereof) released eleven stories. Six of these stories were accompanied by comic books, and some of the stories do reference the continuity of both The Original Series and The Animated Series. Peter Pan Records released the stories on a total of 23 record sets, some featuring one story, others featuring as many as six on one release.

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, McDonald's released its first-ever set of Happy Meal Boxes, featuring comic strips adapting scenes from the film, on six separate boxes. Additional strips were included in special Star Trek Communicator toys included with the Happy Meals.

Around the same time as Marvel Comics was publishing its comic books, a newspaper comic strip based on Star Trek appeared. Like the Marvel publications it, too, told of the adventures of the USS Enterprise after the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It lasted four years and consisted of twenty story arcs.

DC Comics, through their WildStorm Comics imprint, obtained rights to the Star Trek comics for the third (and to date, final) time. Again published as "Paramount Comics", WildStorm limited their releases to single issues and limited series.

Comic publishers IDW Publishing – current publishers of comics based on the CSI, Doctor Who, and 24 TV series – have reached a deal with CBS/Paramount to release new Star Trek comics. IDW limited their releases to mini-series until the ongoing series based on the 2009 film.

The first book – a six-issue mini-series based on The Next Generation, was released in January 2007. A second, TOS-era Klingon-based five-issue mini followed in April 2007, [3](X)[4] with a "Star Trek: Year Four" miniseries following in July 2007 and an "Alien Spotlight" miniseries starting in November 2007. [5](X)[6]